WHAT’S AHEADChris BoyceCEOVirgin Pulsepercent of employers with strategic, holistic well-being programs saw improvements in employeesatisfaction and 65 percent saw improvementsin organizational culture. In addition, in a recentsurvey from Buck Consultants, 74 percent of globalorganizations surveyed say a strong culture of well-being is a key element of their value proposition.

Personalized well-being programs do much
more than empower and prioritize employees.
Through responsive technology and daily
experiences, personalized well-being programs
allow organizations to scale culture while helping
HR leaders meet an ever-expanding set of goals
and responsibilities—people management, talent
optimization, employer branding and culture-building—within a single platform. All of this
combines to create an employee experience that
inspires and motivates.

How can you drive a stronger employeeexperience through well-being?

Make it personal: Advancements in artificial
intelligence and machine learning have provided
unprecedented ways for well-being programs
to learn and respond to user behavior in real-time, offering up tips, suggestions and programs
that are uniquely selected for each individual
employee. In addition, integrations with popular
devices like Amazon Alexa allow well-being to
be fully integrated into existing routines and
workflows, making it seamless and easy to interact
with.

Use it daily: Research proves that personalizedwell-being programs that infuse competition andfun into the experience engage users day afterday, both at work and at home. In fact, over 50percent of Virgin Pulse members interact with ourtechnology at least five times per week—often onnights and weekends. That’s a frequency on-parwith consumer apps.

Create healthy habits: Long-term behavior
change is achieved through small, actionable
steps that become ingrained over time. Well-being programs that are built upon a proven habit
formation methodology have a strong record of
success. That’s because positive behaviors spread
through groups and inspire grassroots culture
among employee populations. In this way, individual
actions translate into organizational results.

And when culture is driven by employees,
engagement and productivity follow. Across
Virgin Pulse’s book of business, 46 percent
of program members say they are now more
engaged at work, 64 percent say they are proud
of their company culture and 49 percent say
they are more productive because of their well-being program.

These results have transformative implications
for HR. Tools, technology and daily experiences
that help employees achieve their goals, develop
positive behaviors, and spread culture, provide
a powerful, scalable platform for driving growth,
engagement and success. Imagine your employees
joining together both online and in-person to do
their best work, give back to their company and
contribute to the organization’s culture, each and
every day. This is the HR of the future.

How will HR need to adapt to meet the growing challenges that come with operating in a business environment that’sincreasingly volatile, uncertain, complex andambiguous?

As workforces around the world experience
radical shifts, and organizations reevaluate the
ways they engage their increasingly dispersed,
multigenerational employee populations, HR
leaders must have an open mind and a willingness
to shake up the status quo. Smart disruption is the
future of HR.

This disruption starts at the workplace. Major
issues impacting businesses today continue to
center on declining employee engagement and
productivity—the U.S. recently saw its longest
worker productivity slump in four decades. While
many factors affect employee engagement,
business leaders are increasingly recognizing that
the lack of authentic, intentional culture-building
has a significant impact on business performance.
Inconsistent, top-down culture has created a
fractured employee experience, which is in
desperate need of repair.

And yet, it’s increasingly critical. In its recent
2017 Global Human Capital Trends research,
Deloitte highlighted employee experience as
a top priority for businesses, indicating that
nearly 80 percent of executives rated employee
experience very important ( 42 percent) or
important ( 38 percent), but only 22 percent
reported that their companies were excellent at
building a differentiated employee experience. In
the months and years ahead, HR will be charged
with closing this gap.

Delivering a differentiated employee
experience is about empowering employees to
bring their best selves to work, every day. It’s
about delivering personalized experiences that
help employees to learn, grow, advance, achieve
and maximize their success. An exceptional
employee experience—one that focuses on
employees’ physical, mental, emotional and
financial well-being—offers organizations the
opportunity to connect with employees in a direct
and proactive way that demonstrates how much
they are valued.

With data increasingly validating the connectionbetween employee health and businessperformance, organizations are investing in andembracing well-being as a strategic businessimperative. In Virgin Pulse’s recent State of theIndustry Report, 78 percent of organizationssaid they view employee well-being as a criticalcomponent of their business strategy and 74Smart Disruption and the NewEmployee Experience